Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, that was exactly the wrong medicine for the Australian economy. Not only were they talking about slowing the Australia economy; the measures they introduced in their own budget were inflationary. They increased taxes on the car industry. Look at the car industry today. It was the government of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer that deliberately took a baseball bat to the car industry in the May budget at exactly the wrong time.

They had another initiative that was clearly inflationary: changing the private health insurance rebate. Of course it was going to be inflationary. What was the impact? We are yet to see just how far premiums will increase, but have no doubt they will increase way beyond the existing inflation rate. Then there was the alcopops initiative. That was all about raising revenue, all about raising prices and all about raising inflation. Yet they claimed their budget would be anti-inflationary—that it would put downward pressure on inflation. The contradictory messages coming out of the Labor government caused confusion and distress in the Australian economy and caused confusion and distress for Australian consumers. That is the net impact when you do not have economic leadership based on sound fundamental principles—when you not do not have economic leadership that is based on hope and confidence and when you do not have economic leadership that is responsible and measured—but rather befuddled economic speeches, statements and moments from the Treasurer. They talked about the inflation genie being out of the bottle. They said, ‘This is bad, really bad.’

We heard those horrific statements in October last year. If there were any confidence left in the Australian economy amongst small business and amongst consumers, the Prime Minister sapped it all—he took it out; he vacuumed up any confidence left in the Australian economy with his overblown rhetoric and his continuing war footing on the economy. Of course he made inappropriate responses. He went too far on the government guarantee. He went too far in a range of measures, including the $10 billion stimulus package. We supported him at that time because we believed him to have evidence that would justify such an extraordinary measure. Over time we have discovered that, no, he did not have any evidence but in fact he was focused on other things—political things. We now know that the recent $42 billion package has in part been focused on the Queensland election so that the cheques can be received by Queensland householders during the course of the election campaign. That is just a coincidence—there is no relationship!

We must ask ourselves: where to now? I can say that the biggest losers from the Rudd Labor government are going to be the workers of Australia. The workers of Australia previously enjoyed low unemployment. The workers of Australia previously enjoyed high real wages. The workers of Australia previously had job security. Every initiative of the Rudd government to date has been more focused on politics than it has been on the economics of the nation. Everything they have said and done has focused on the next vote rather than what is right. There are costs in that—the great bill that is going to come out of that political equation and that political question will be paid by the next generation of Australians.

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